


Farmer of the Heart

by Maverick



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 09:14:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26969560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maverick/pseuds/Maverick
Summary: Food (and art) is love.AKA More story time with Joe and Nicky
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 16
Kudos: 100





	Farmer of the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Rumi: _With every breath, I plant the seeds of devotion, I am a farmer of the heart._
> 
> Thanks to Pollitt for beta. She never fails to find the phrases I'm not sure about and helps make them better.

One of the great things about having Nile with them was that her curious nature made her seek out stories about their long past. Andy couldn’t believe all the new things she’d learned about Nicky and Joe after 900 years of shared connection. It was a revelation she needed. Somewhere along the way she had forgotten to remember the humanity infused in their history. Nile brought that side out with ease and Andy found herself enjoying the stories Joe and Nicky told, some she knew, many she didn’t. She even shared some of her own.

They were settled into an estate about forty minutes outside of Florence, Italy. Their next mission was nearly a month away and Nicky and Joe were determined to show Nile all their favorite places in Europe. Normally, Andy would go off by herself, but ever since Merrick she had found comfort in her team. She didn’t know how much time she had left and what time she did, she wanted to spend it with the people who mattered most.

Nile always seemed to have a topic picked out. _What’s your favorite modern convenience?_ Andy always said indoor plumbing, but the microwave could soon top that now that Nile had taught her how to make cake in a mug. _What do you miss most about the Renaissance?_ She left that one to the boys as the loss of Quynh muted that whole period for her. All she truly remembered from that era was that pain and sadness were her constant companions. _What famous dude was the biggest asshole?_ Andy would never admit it, but she agreed with Joe about Thomas Jefferson but her level of contempt could never reach Yusef’s proportions.

But a lot of the time her questions centered around Joe and Nicky’s endless love story. After centuries of missions and chronicles, Andy mostly saw them as one unit, JoeandNicky, so it was sometimes a surprise to learn how their lives became so entwined in their own words.

Tonight was one of those days. They had just settled in for the night after spending the day outside in the sun drinking wine and eating the feast that Nicky had prepared. They were now in what Joe had Nile has deemed the sun room because of all the natural light. The two of them had easels and canvases set up in the corner. Right now, Nicky and Joe were pressed against each other on the small leather couch. Nile had plopped down on some sort of fancy art deco bean bag chair and Andy was sitting in the recliner that faced the sofa, with her legs tucked under her. _“What’s your favorite gift that Joe has given you?_ You can’t say his love,” Nile quickly added. 

“You can’t say his dick either,” Andy called out, 

Nicky shook his head. “As neither of those are finite, I would not have answered that way.”

Joe smirked and winked at Nicky. “I would have.”

“I know my love. You are incorrigible.” Nicky turned to look at Nile.“ Joe has given me many things over the last millennium, but my favorite is from before we were even a couple. We had stopped killing each other and were traveling together, but hadn’t quite figured out what we were or the enormity of what we felt for each other.” 

Nile cocked her head. “That’s sounding an awful lot like love.”

Nicky raised an eyebrow at Nile and waited until she quieted to continue. “We spent a lot of time sitting across from each other at campfires talking into the night about our faiths, about our families, about our lives before the battlefield, and what our fears were about our immortality. One night, I told him about my mother and how she died when I was ten and that I was afraid I would forget her face.”

Joe leaned over and kissed Nicky’s temple.

“He offered to draw her for me. So every night I would describe what I remembered about my mother’s face and Joe would draw her and redraw her and redraw her until his creation matched my mind’s eye view of mi madre. And over the centuries he continued to recreate that image so that I will never forget.”

Joe pulled out his tablet and scrolled through his artwork until he brought up a rendition of that first drawing. “It’s in the cloud now so it won’t ever be lost.”

Nile turned to Joe and looked at the drawing. “That’s amazing, Joe.”

Andy looked at the picture and then at Nicky. She had never seen it before. “You have your mother’s eyes, Nicky.”

Nicky smiled. “I do. All my other features were my father’s, but I have her eyes. I was the only one of my siblings to have her eyes.” He took the tablet from Joe and touched the image of his mother’s face reverently. “So this right here is the greatest gift that Yusef ever gave me.” 

“Ti amo,” Joe said.

“Habib Albi,” Nicky replied, giving the tablet back to Joe. 

“Okay, your turn Joe. Same parameters.” 

Joe crossed his arms and pursed his lips in a pout. “Fine. But I state for the record that Nicky’s love is the greatest gift I could ever receive.” 

“Not his dick?” Andy asked with a snicker.

“Nicky’s love emcompasses all things physical, emotional and spiritual so his di--” 

Nile cut him off. “We know Joe. Believe me, we know. Favorite gift outside of his love.”

Joe took a minute to just look at Nicky. “Nicolo has given me many gifts that I cherish and treasure, but my favorite also goes back almost to the beginning. As you both know,” Joe said, looking to Andy and then Nile, ”Nicky knows his way around a kitchen. That wasn’t always the case. When we met, neither of us really had any sort of cooking skills.”

Nicky nodded his head. “We ate a lot undercooked and overcooked lentils.”

“Who knew you could burn water?” Joe said with a wink. “But with each place we traveled, Nicky sought out the nonnas, the grandmothers, to teach him to cook.” Joe turned his head and threw Nicky a smile and a wink. “Nicolo always had a way with the ladies.” 

Nicky smiled back. “Ladies of a certain age anyway. They were happy to teach me and I was very happy to learn.” 

“He would do manual labor and other chores and they taught him so many things.” Joe turned back and looked at Nicky, holding his gaze. “He learned how to properly cook lentils, how to cure meat, how to make cheese. They taught him about herbs -- what grew in the wild and where to find them as well as how to dry and store them. They taught him how to make pita over a fire.” 

“Joe would barter for flour and yeast and I’d turn it into pita.”

“So Nicky’s learning to cook is his greatest gift to you?”

Joe leveled Nile with a look. “And I’m branded the impatient one. I’m not finished. That’s just the backstory.”

Nile laughed. “Do go on then.” 

“To answer your question, Nile. Nicky learning to cook was indeed a gift for me because even to this day, food for Nicky is all about fuel. He rarely eats for pleasure.”

“I cook so others can enjoy the food.” 

“And we do, Habibi” Joe kissed Nicky’s temple again. “So he learned all these skills and as he said in his story, we spent many nights talking about our lives before we met. I told him of my jadati, my grandmother, and how I was her favorite. And she always celebrated my return from trading missions with a tajine.

“The tomato stew we had in Morocco?”

Andy nodded while Joe shook his head. “Tunisan or Maghreb tajine is different, more egg based.”

Nicky knocked Joe’s shoulder with his own. “It’s more like a frittata, and when cooked over open flames it forms a crunchy film on the outside that envelops the succulent middle. The smoke from the flames becomes infused into the tajine and that flavor is missing when not cooked that way. But it's the spices that really sets it apart. It’s spiced with a mixture known as tabil.”

“Several decades after our first deaths, I took Nicky to Sfax, the port city in Tunisia where I grew up. Enough time had passed that I was reasonably sure no one would recognize me and I got to take Nicky to all my favorite places. And Nicky, in his quest to bring joy through food, he sought out a local nonna to teach him how to make tajine the Tunisan way. 

Nicky smiled and leaned against Joe. “And as fate would have it, Rahma, the jadati who taught me several Tunisian dishes including tajine, turned out to be one of Joe’s nieces.” 

“No way,” Nile said smiling.

“Indeed. Happy accident. She would talk of learning to cook at the hip of her great-grandmother, who was, of course, Joe's jadati. She explained that all tabil started with ground coriander seeds along with caraway seeds, chili powder and garlic powder, but that families develop their own versions on it. The secret to the Al-Kaysani tabil is cloves.

“Cloves? They aren’t native to Tunisia are they?” Andy asked, caught up in the story.

Joe shook his head and motioned for Nicky to finish the story.

“They are not. But you see, Rahma’s jadati would tell tales of her sweet grandson Yusef, who introduced her to cloves that he brought back to her from one of his first trading adventures when he was just sixteen. Rahma went on to explain how her uncle Yusef was lost at sea and that the family always included cloves in their tabil to honor him.” 

Joe turned his face into Nicky’s neck, his eyes wet. He turned back forward, leaving his head resting on Nicky’s shoulder. “So not only did Nicolo learn to cook my favorite home-cooked meal, he learned the secret behind the spices in it. He gave me back a connection to my family I’d thought I’d lost forever. And on those occasions where we work different fronts on missions, he always welcomes me home with my jadati’s tajine.”

“That’s some next level romantic shit there you two,” Nile said with a smile. “I’m beginning to believe there is more to that whole fate thing.”

Andy always scoffed when Joe and Nicky talked about fate, but there had to be a reason they were all in this together. She was glad they had each other. She had a thought. “Hey Nicky, there’s a fire pit out back, could you use that to make the tajine.”

Both Nicky and Joe’s faces lit up like the sun. Nicky smiled. “I could indeed. I’d love to make it for everyone.”

Joe squeezed Nicky’s knee. “Boss, you want to go into town with me tomorrow to pick up the spices?” Joe asked. 

Andy nodded. “We could get gelato too.” 

Joe laughed. “Of course. I’ll pick up more paints for us too, Nile. What can we get for you, my love?”

Nicky swung his arm across Joe’s shoulders. “I’ll make you a grocery list, but olive wood for the fire if you can find it. And I would not say no to a new decorative platter to serve the tajine on.”

Now that was something Andy could do. “We’ll find you the perfect one,” she said. Nicky really didn’t seem to favor food but he did love Raffaellesco pottery. The connection to the Vatican and seafaring merchants with their benevolent dragon made even more sense now. She’d read that having a piece of Raffaellesco pottery in your house brought good luck. They all deserved some of that. It was the least she could do. They would gather and eat a meal that celebrated their shared history. Was it fate? Andy didn’t know, but it was certainly about family and love and that was a gift worth celebrating.

**Author's Note:**

> I chose Sfax as Joe's place of origin because it was and is a port city in Tunisia. I don't think it was ever stated where he was from so it seemed like a good fit. 
> 
> Nicky has a thing for [Raffaellesco Pottery](https://www.italianpottery.com/product-category/deruta/deruta-raffaellesco/) because I have a thing for it and its story reminds me of Joe and Nicky.


End file.
